Take Control of Your Thoughts | Joel Brookman

We all understand the concept of conditioning our bodies regardless of whether we choose to do it or not. It essentially comes down to diet and exercise. If we do not exercise and have no regard for our diet, it can ultimately lead to poor physical health.

What about conditioning the mind? Might I suggest that if we don’t condition our mind it can lead to poor mental health? I’m not proposing that you will have psychosis or mental illness, just the inability to take control of your thoughts.

We all have inner dialogue. Most of us tend to play stories in our mind over and over again. If the story is unpleasant or potentially stressful, this repeated mental playback could make it into something much bigger and more harmful (from a mental perspective) than it needs to be.

Assume you have a meeting with your boss at the end of the day on Friday. He tells you that he is not happy with the work you have done on a particular project. You then go home and replay this in your mind throughout the entire weekend. It keeps you up at night and you are completely disengaged from your family. This is an example of allowing your mind to take control. If instead you applied mental conditioning, you would first assess the situation to decide if there is any action you could take to improve or repair it. If it is something beyond your control, you accept this fact and move on. The key is to redirect your inner dialogue and not allow it to build. If left unchecked, your mind will begin to examine worst-case scenarios and replay those over and over. The reality is that 90% of what we worry about never comes to be, so why allow these issues to have such a dramatic impact on you. This is where the mental conditioning comes in.

If you control your inner dialogue in the early stages, before it builds into something bigger, you will significantly reduce the magnitude of stress you experience. A great technique for accomplishing this is to wear a rubber band on your wrist. When that negative thought starts to repeat itself, snap it, take a few deep breaths, and redirect your mind to something more positive. Over time this will condition your mind to not dwell on these negative thoughts. The end result is that these negative situations will have far less impact on your life and you will begin to take control of your thoughts.